Savannah-Chatham public schools officials are trying to determine the best way to control overcrowding at Godley Station K-8 School.

The education sales tax-funded school opened in 2010 with room for 1,200 students. On opening day, 1,500 showed up. Three years later, even with eight portable classroom buildings, a portable restroom unit and all of the pre-kindergarten classes moved to another school, Godley Station is still bursting at the seams.

The school is 30 percent over capacity and officials anticipate the need for six more portable classrooms next year.

District officials had hoped to relieve the overcrowding issues at Godley by using funds from the second education sales tax, ESPLOST II, to build a new K-8 school in Port Wentworth. But that construction isn’t expected to be complete until August 2016.

“We really need to get 300 or so out of the building,” said Savannah-Chatham Public Schools Chief of Staff David Fields.

Wednesday, school board members were presented with several options to immediately address overcrowding at Godley Station K-8:

• Lease more portable buildings.

• Change attendance zone and shift students to existing elementary and middle schools on the westside.

• Make Port Wentworth a K-8 now — before an ESPLOST II-funded campus is built in 2016 — and redistrict students from Godley there.

• Create a year-round staggered schedule at Godley so all students can attend school there at various times throughout the year.

Fields said Friday in an email that the possibilities “are simply ideas for discussion at this point.”

“Dr. Lockamy requested feedback from board members on the various options presented,” he wrote.

“No recommendation has been formulated, and it is entirely possible that some other ideas may surface which may provide a better solution than the ones initially discussed.”

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